Lives and works in Düsseldorf (Germany)
Leverkusen is a “small big city” near Cologne, known for the headquarters of the chemical group Bayer and its football club named after the chemical giant. You could imagine more exciting places. But that is exactly what evidently appealed Thomas Struth: its absolute ordinariness. The photographer, who first studied painting with Gerhard Richter and later photography with Bernd Becher at the Staatliche Kunstakademie in Dusseldorf, does not look for the extraordinary in this series of “unconscious places”, from which the exhibited work originates, but rather for its opposite. His interest was in what usually passes you by, without you even perceiving it since it is too much a part of your own reality, too profane, too familiar. With his large-format camera, Struth has photographed European, American and Asian streets, residential buildings and urban structures, all in black and white and always deserted. With poetic precision and the keen eye of the analyst, in this way he deciphers the strange world in which we feel at home.
 
Leverkusen - view 1, 1980, series of 3 vintage silver gelatin prints on Agfa paper, je 28,3 x 9,6 cm
Donation to Kunstpalast Düsseldorf
Leverkusen - view 2, 1980, series of 3 vintage silver gelatin prints on Agfa paper, je 28,3 x 9,6 cm
Donation to Kunstpalast Düsseldorf
Leverkusen - view 3, 1980, series of 3 vintage silver gelatin prints on Agfa paper, je 28,3 x 9,6 cm
Donation to Kunstpalast Düsseldorf